Revisioning Beckett

S. E. Gontarski is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, USA, where he edited the Journal of Beckett Studies from 1989 to 2008. He is the author or editor of 29 books. His editions of Beckett's writings include Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1928-1989 (1996), The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, Volume IV: The Shorter Plays (1999), and The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, Volume II: Endgame (1993). He has been awarded four National Endowment for the Humanities research grants, has twice been awarded Fulbright Professorships, and has been Guest Editor of the American Book Review, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Modern Fiction Studies, and Drammaturgia.

• AcknowledgmentsForeword Anthony Uhlmann (Western Sydney University, Australia)Demonology, Sade-ism, and Samuel Beckett's Decadent Turn: An IntroductionI. A Professional Life1. Samuel Beckett and Lace Curtain Irish Modernisms2. Publishing in America: Sam and Barney 3. Eleutheria: Samuel Beckett’s Suppressed Bohemian ManifestoII. A Theatrical Life4. Textual Aberrations, Ghost Texts and the British Godot: A Saga of Censorship5. 'Nothingness in Words Enclosed?': Waiting for Godot 6. An End to Endings: Samuel Beckett’s End Game(s)7. Samuel Beckett's Art of Self-Collaboration8. Beckett's Keyhole Art: Voyeurism, Schaulust and the Perversions of Theatre9. 'He Wants to Know If It Hurts!': The Body as Text in Samuel Beckett’s TheatreIII. A Philosophical Life10. Theatrical and Theoretical Intersections: Samuel Beckett, Herbert Blau, Civil Rights and the Politics of Godot11. Beckett and the Revisioning of Modernism(s): Molloy12. A Sense of Unending: Fictions for the End of Time 13. The Death of Style: Samuel Beckett’s Art of Repetition, Pastiche and Cut-upsBibliographyIndex

There is much here for scholars of Beckett, and more broadly of modernism, decadence, drama and performance studies, literary theory, censorship, and history of the book ... He foregrounds Beckett’s modernist decadence as ever self-inventing and relating to the contemporary age. His discussions encourage important new lines of study, especially regarding performance studies, African American theater, prison theater, queer studies, and manuscript andarchival studies, as well as attention to Beckett’s later prose, poetry, and drama.